The proposal comes on the heels of the 2000 election, in which
the amount of money spent on interest group issue advertising rivaled
the total amount spent by any one of the national party House or Senate
campaign committees.

This Task Force was made up an extraordinarily diverse group:
Republicans and Democrats, former candidates and consultants, corporate
and labor executives, election lawyers and administrators,” Malbin
said. “It was remarkable to see them come together around such
thoughtful ideas. They brought a lot of experience to the table.
Task Force members have worked on presidential campaigns in every
election since the Federal Campaign Act of 1974 became law.”

The CFI Task Force report recommends disclosure of political
advertisers who sponsor campaign-related advertising within 60 days of
an election when the advertising is targeted to specific voters.
Unlike other proposals, the CFI proposal includes certain lobbying
advertising exemptions and several provisions to target disclosure
precisely to ensure it is constitutional.
Disclosure emerged as a major issue in 2000. President George W. Bush
became the first candidate to disclose all his contributors on his Web
site; Congress enacted a disclosure bill that covered some of the newer
issue ad groups; and issue ad groups, some of whom were criticized for
not making adequate disclosure, spent substantially more than $60
million during the campaign. Meanwhile, the Congress is considering
several bills that would regulate issue ad disclosure, and the Supreme
Court has been asked to review its first case on the subject later this
year.

The CFI Task Force’s proposal is more than just a new set of
proposed rules It is based on a fundamental rethinking of the
premises that have guided discussions in this arena down too many blind
alleys. The Task Force specifically noted that the Supreme Court’s
“express advocacy” and “magic words” tests were not required by the
Constitution. Rather, the Court developed those doctrines to make
sense out of a vague law. Rather than patch up the law, which built
around speakers’ “purposes”, the new approach put the voter at the
center of the equation. The main point of disclosure is to help voters
understand what they are hearing and seeing. “We do not need to know why a person shouts fire in a crowded theater,” the Task Force report says.
“We only need to know it was done, and is likely to have a predictable effect.”

This is an important breakthrough in the way to think about
these issues,” said Malbin. “Campaign disclosure rules must recognize
and respect political advertisers’ rights of free speech and
association, but it must also be based on the compelling public
interest in getting key information to voters to let them judge
political ads and make election decisions.”